A weekly journal on architecture, anthropology and radiant based heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The role of indoor environmental ergonomics, industrial design, HVAC as a health care issue and other human factors in the design of indoor spaces.

June 02, 2013

It was serendipitous that my keynote at the Pathways 2 Sustainability
Conference was in the Telus Spark Science Center. The HVAC system was designed
by the Calgary office of Dialog who have described the IEQ systems as;

“Along with lots of natural Calgary light and smart water
use, the building design brings fresh air to every room. Rather than a typical,
forced-air ventilation and cooling system, the building incorporates
displacement ventilation and radiant panels to distribute fresh air and highly
effective heating and cooling for visitor comfort. The atrium and extensive
lobby areas are heated and cooled with a radiant chilled/heated slab system for
a non-intrusive but highly effective conditioning system. Underseat
displacement ventilation is provided in the 250-person IMAX theatre for optimum
thermal comfort and ventilation effectiveness.”

Interestingly, the HVAC zone for the exhibit hall (converted
into the P2S2013 conference space) was tested beyond its functional capacity as over
250 delegates filled a space likely designed for less. (hopefully someone from
Dialog will show up and correct my assumption). Despite the load, the thermal comfort was well beyond
most conference halls that I have visited (and there have been hundreds). The
air quality not so much. As the occupant load increased it was necessary to
open the adjoining doors connecting a large open hallway to the conference room
and that one simple solution seemed to do the trick for most of the attendees.

The point being - despite a heavy occupant load during three days
of rain the radiant cooling panels never once condensed as the air system was
capable of maintaining a lean air mixture.

I really like how the Architectural/Interior Designers and
Mechanical Engineers incorporated the ventilation columns into the space – very
nice.

Brad Struble Telus Spark representative and director of
design gave us the tour and did a great job explaining the project as well as
helping adapt the space to the conference and for the adaptive measures to help
maintain the indoor environmental quality.

You can learn more about the project including the radiant
based HVAC system from this video (can view in Google Chrome).

April 30, 2013

Excerpt: “This is the third booklet in our PLEA Notes
series. Each of these Notes is intended to deal with one particular and narrow
aspect of design, of a technical /scientific nature. These Notes serve a dual
purpose: to be a learning tool, introducing the subject and discussing it in mainly
qualitative terms, but also to be a design tool, to provide quantitative data
and methods for the consideration of the particular subject matter in design.
An implicit aim is also to create an authoritative reference work, which would provide
a concise but comprehensive summary of the state of the art of the subject.

In this Note 3 the undergraduate student will find part 1,
then sections 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 of part 2 as well as part 3 of particular
interest. The practising designer (using the above sections as introduction)
will - we hope - find part 4 most useful. The research student, or anyone
interested in the whys and wherefores will find part 2 as a unique reference
source.

References for the comfort index data sheets are given in
footnote form, similarly in places where they refer to that page only. General
references are listed in alphabetical order on pages 62 – 63.

We hope that this Note will contribute in some small way to
the creation of better buildings, healthier indoor environments and energy
conservation, thus serve the broad aims of PLEA and a sustainable future.”

With ACCA’s Quality Assurance program and these
manufactures and service providers’ commitment to excellence there can be
confidence in the design and installation of radiant based HVAC systems in
America.

June 01, 2012

Two very big buildings made of glass one just received a LEED Platinumdesignation and labelled the most energy efficient building in America (adjacent photo) and the other is becoming fodder for cynical engineers worldwide; building scientist Ted Kesik called it "architectural pornography" – so why the hypocrisy since they’re both made of glass?

We’ve not seen the energy reports on the Aqua Tower (AQT) (we may never see them) but the published results for the Manitoba Hydro building (MHB) are stated here, “The building's target was for a 60 per cent reduction in energy consumption compared to the Canadian Model National Energy Code for Buildings. The goal was to attain LEED Gold certification. It proved to be even more efficient than anticipated, achieving reductions in energy use of over 70 per cent. In May 2012, Manitoba Hydro Place received LEED® Platinum certification, making it the most energy efficient office tower in North America and the only office tower in Canada to receive this prestigious rating.”

So what`s the difference? In the case of MHB it hired indoor climate and energy engineers TransSolar to evaluate the energy and indoor environmental quality of numerous models before the integrated design team selected the one offering the best opportunity to meet the client’s objectives of an energy efficient indoor climate. This process took years of preconstruction planning (started in 2002) ultimately resulting in the double façade building (think a building within a building) having opening windows on all of its office tower floors, conditioned with low temperature radiant heating and high temperature radiant cooling; ventilated with a dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) with heat recovery - boosted by inline fans in the under floor displacement air system and augment by the solar chimney for pulling draft on the entire structure. The HVAC and domestic plant is a geothermal system powered by hydro and assisted with peaking natural gas boilers. What is so great about this building is the attention given to the mechanical and electrical system and how the architecture flows around it to enable its peak performance – it’s truly ingenious and inspiring and a huge credit to the architectural and engineering teams.

On the other hand, “The Aqua was named the Emporis Skyscraper Award 2009 skyscraper of the year and was shortlisted in 2010 for the biannual International Highrise Award”, perhaps a result of the architectural focus that left the mechanical and electrical engineering teams the responsibility of making the building work – this classic approach is repeatedly demonstrated as being flawed in a world concerned about sustainability.

As we have said over and over again in this journal and in industry publications – first let the engineers and interior designers create the DNA for the building and then use architecture to enable these systems to operate at peak performance.

This inverted process is the DNA of our upcoming cross Canada Tour hosted by Uponor – who by the way supplied the radiant heating and cooling system for the LEED Platinum Manitoba Hydro Building and the radiant heating and cooling system for the LEED Platinum NREL Research Facility and many other high performance buildings.

You’ll not want to miss this course – it will change how you do buildings.

May 21, 2012

As readers of this Journal know, I read a lot of paper’s and by far the best ones are though such outlets as the University of CaliforniaeScholarship which, “provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services and research tools” to readers like me.

Below is the abstract from the paper - there is nothing more to be said other than read the paper – you’ll be much more wiser for it.

The main objective of the Ph.D. study was to examine occupants’ perception of comfort in nonindustrial buildings (homes and offices), in particular how building occupants understand comfort and which parameters, not necessarily related to indoor environments, influence the perception of comfort.

To meet the objective, the following actions were taken: (1) a literature survey exploring which indoor environmental parameters (thermal, acoustic, visual environment and air quality)predominantly determine overall comfort and whether other factors unrelated to the indoor environment influence the perception of comfort; the literature survey summarized 42 peer reviewed and conference articles and 1 book covering the period from 1970 to 2009;(2) preparation, distribution and analysis of a questionnaire survey sent to 2499 addresses representing the most common types of residential buildings in Denmark and filled out by 645persons (response rate of 26%); and (3) analysis of the post-occupancy satisfaction survey conducted by the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California Berkeley in 351 mainly U.S. office buildings and filled out by 52,980 building occupants.

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Final comment: Kudo’s to CBE and DTU for making this and other papers available on an open access basis – wish more academic institutes would follow your path.

Designed by architecture firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent (LAS) in collaboration with Francis Cauffman as consulting dental architect, the five-story, 269,000-square-foot building features a host of sustainable design elements and is targeting LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The natural light-filled building, whose dominant exterior design element is a gentle curve that spans the length of building’s 1.68-acre footprint, was developed in response to patient and student input that called for an environment that was anything but institutional.

“I think we are one of the first, if not the first dental school in the world to solicit building design input from a Patient and Family Centered Care committee,” said Connie Drisko, CDM dean at GHSU (formerly the Medical College of Georgia). “The committee members told us that they wanted a patient-friendly building. And moving to this building from a box-like structure with not a lot of windows, I personally told the architects, ‘Don’t give me a box.’

“Lord, Aeck & Sargent translated into reality a building that fits our vision and needs. It’s a building that has a really spectacular outer appearance, an interior that flows, and LEED features to help lower our maintenance costs,” Drisko added.

May 10, 2012

So what do you think? Kind of appropriate after featuring the thermal bridging exposure from the Aqua Tower that Dr. John Straube’s new manual, “High Performance Enclosures” shows up in our mail box!

So I haven’t had a chance to jump fully into this new publication from Building Science Press but what I have seen is excellent. Straube provides with clarity both the graphics and text to explain in detail numerous enclosures from both the low rise and high rise camps. I particularly like the work he’s done on building form and orientation plus the discussions on building loading. As expected there is some duplication for clarification of principles from Straube and Burnett’s 2005, “Building Science for Building Enclosures” which was a modernization and expansion of Hutcheon and Handegord 1983 classic, “Building Science for a Cold Climates”; but unlike the latter references which were targeted more to the engineering sciences, the new publication is more for the practicing engineering, technician, architect and builder - having less theory and more practical example of the what and how to do’s. For a good one-two punch at building science and enclosures you won’t find a better pair of manuals than the 2005 and 2012 publications to keep you company during those cold winter design days.

A note at all publishers…we get the reasoning behind the paper bound publications but really - it’s getting old…we would happily pay a small premium for secured .pdf versions rather than fund the world of transportation, duty and brokerage which adds zero value to the materials. Look at it this way...if we spent less money on zero education value items we could spend more money on the valuable educational items. Those are my thoughts and I'm sticking to them...

September 08, 2011

The folks from Business Information Group with Publisher Peter Leonard and his merry band of editors have just launched the premier issue of Better Building, a magazine for progressive residential constructors.

Inside the front cover is Murray Pound, Vice President of Operations for Gold Seal Master Builder. Murray is a unique individual in that he is both a master builder and professional fire fighter who has been advocating for fire sprinklers for many years. He’s seen the carnage and horrific scenes from senseless destruction and knows firsthand the aftermath of buildings burnt to the ground.

I have the pleasure of knowing Murray and always pay attention to his stories as a builder and the stories of fires he’s fought and so should you. As a 13 year veteran fire fighter and just completing their 300th project - the folks at Gold Seal have a deep understanding of safe, secure, energy efficient comfortable homes…check them out today.

There are a number of residential fire safety systems available today and one of them comes from Uponor a supporter of ours and colleague to the industry. They’re a leader in this field and we suggest you look at their product offering.

Lots of other good stuff in the issue including a few words from yours truly on building codes, enclosures, IEQ and HVAC systems – access the issue here (note: you’ll have to scroll down on the landing page to Supplements & Special Features).

August 27, 2010

We just released our long awaited simplified summary of energy, entropy, efficiency, exergy and efficacy based on our brand new presentation on sustainability and early feedback from industry leaders has been great. It’s all consolidated into a single web page – written of course in basic easy to understand language and linked back to numerous pages within the www.healthyheating.com website.

If you missed the HRAI of Canada’s annual general meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta, saw the sustainability slides posted earlier but wanted the descriptive language – well now you have it.

June 16, 2010

The answer is “not necessarily,” according to a new report released today by Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI), titled “LEED Certification: Where Energy Efficiency Collides With Human Health.”

EHHI is a non-profit organization composed of doctors, public health professionals and policy experts who specialize in research that examines environmental threats to human health.

LEED Standards Are Being Adopted into Many Laws

Green Building Council standards are being incorporated into federal, state and local laws through legislation, executive orders, resolutions, policies, loan-granting criteria and tax credits. As demonstrated in this report, LEED standards are clearly insufficient to protect human health, yet they are being adopted by many levels of government as law. Thus the Green Building Council, a trade association for the building industry, is effectively structuring the regulations. The number of jurisdictions adopting these standards as law is growing, which will make them difficult if not impossible to change, unless federal law and regulation supersede the “green” standards with health-protective regulations.

RBc: Last week one of our readers suggested we list Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI) on our blog on environmental health. The report is another reason for people to understand the total definition of IEQ and specifically the relationships between bodies and buildings.

Also as we said last week: Study our slides on The Human Factors in HVAC and understand why we feel strongly that elements of architecture such as building enclosures, interior design and HVAC need to be removed out from under the world of construction and be repositioned within the healthcare industry.

Plus make note of our recent post where we provide advice related to the trust consumers place in the words of healthcare workers vs those of the trades, general contractors and developers.

Health trumps energy everytime (Bud Offermann)...Again for the millionth time - your building can be therapeutic or threatening – it’s your choice.

May 31, 2010

Excerpt: “In my message to you in the Summer 2009 issue of Journal of Building Enclosure Design, I discussed the need to raise awareness to improve building enclosures. I outlined several examples in that article, such as recognizing David Altenhofen for his efforts to establish Building Enclosure Councils (BECs) throughout the country, the work Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) is doing to bring awareness to the issue of high-performing buildings, the programs held at the 12th Canadian Conference on Building Science and Technology, and the December 2009 Ecobuild America Conference held in Washington, D.C.

Each of these examples addressed a consistent theme: education. These examples all focused on the need to improve our knowledge base to better utilize the latest technology to advance our building systems and to gain greater return on our investments. Investing in education is money well spent.”Henry L. Green, Hon. AIA, President, National Institute of Building Sciences

RBc: Henry gets it right with, “Investing in education is money well spent.”

Somehow clients and architects need to get beyond interior and exterior aesthetics as primary driving forces in form. Why? Because there is piling up of discouraged engineers and building scientists who despite their best efforts face a constant battle over enclosures and systems attributable to what is wrongly perceived as high fee’s related to the design and management of comfortable, healthy and energy efficient structures.

Remember sustainability is branch of philosophy and there is still significant philosophical conflicts occurring between what is scientifically right (engineers, architects and interior designers) and what creative enclosure gets built (architects, interior designers and clients).

Education brings awareness to the issue of high-performing buildings but as we have all experienced, having the knowledge means nothing unless it is applied/ executed in practice.

Our Purpose

Established in 2004, The Journal of Indoor Environmental Quality (JIEQ) in conjunction with Healthy Heating serves as a technical interpreter and consolidator of academic research demonstrating the building and health sciences are inclusive elements. It provides professional development programs based on its analysis to application professionals such as architects, engineers, interior designers and related technicians.

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Quotes

“The quality of housing conditions plays a decisive role in the health status of the residents, because many health problems are either directly or indirectly related to the building itself, the construction materials that were used, and the equipment or the size or structure of the individual dwellings.”
The World Health Organization

"Indoor environmental quality is in part a result of materials and methods of construction which has an influence on occupant health. For this reason, policies around health and construction cannot be treated separately and must be linked together." Source: Bean, R., IAQ Webinar Presentation, 2009

The HVAC system consumes 50-60% of the building energy cost and generates 80-85% of tenant complaints.
Source: U.S. General Services Administration, Public Buildings Service, Office of the Chief Architect

Good Design

“Industrial designers determine the form and interaction qualities of manufactured products...They study people at work, at home and in motion to create satisfying experiences with products from the kitchen and the office to the hospital and the warehouse…” Excerpt from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

In our opinion, industrial design has been overlooked by the HVAC industry – illustrated by consumers facing difficulties selling homes with HVAC systems which have “beast in the boiler room.”

Be reminded by S. Claire Conroy from Residential Architecture, "It's time architects of every discipline understand residential architecture for what it really is: everyone's most intimate connection with architecture. It's not simply a “test bed”—it's a vessel for our lives on their most personal level. That makes the stakes very high indeed. No one is more discriminating and demanding than a residential client.”

"A lot of it has to do with how we are responding at a physiological level to what we see as we walk in through the door." Sarah Susanka, Architect

“Industrial designers determine the form and interaction qualities of manufactured products...They study people at work, at home and in motion to create satisfying experiences with products from the kitchen and the office to the hospital and the warehouse…” Excerpt from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

"In any industry, one of the most important and difficult tasks is to explain a nuanced process to someone unfamiliar with the field. At its grass roots, design is a process like many others; it has theories, strategies and examples that can be explained on a general level. It’s not a matter of what type of information is given, but rather how it is presented and to what type of audience."
Speaking Design to Non-Designers, IDSA